NEW YORK — Michael Herr, the author and Oscar-nominated screenplay writer who viscerally documented the ravages of the Vietnam War through his classic nonfiction novel “Dispatches” and through such films as “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket,” died after a long illness. He was 76.

A native of Syracuse, N.Y., with a reverence for Ernest Hemingway, Herr was part of the New Journalism wave that included Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer and advocated applying literary style and techniques to traditional reporting.

“Dispatches” is often ranked with Tim O’Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried,” Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie” and Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History” as essential reading about the war.

Herr spent much of his 20s traveling and working for magazines before convincing Esquire magazine to let him travel to Vietnam and write a monthly column. He ended up staying more than a year, producing few columns at the time, but gathering the material for what became “Dispatches,” profane, impassioned and knowing reports that helped capture a generation’s sense of outrage and disillusion.